Detroit — Socorro Truchan says one of the best things to come out of the recent pro-life essay and poster contest has been the opportunity it has given her to meet with the young winners and learn the extent of pro-life activity in Catholic schools.

“There was positive feedback about the opportunity the contest provided to engage in pro-life issues,” says Truchan, coordinator of the archdiocesan Marrige, Family and Pro-Life Office.

“Recently, I visited Marian High School, where more than 100 girls are in the Life Club. They were making blankets to give to a center,” she says.

While Truchan acknowledges that such a high level of participation is exceptional, she says many other Catholic high schools she has visited also have very active pro-life student clubs.

“Meeting their members has impressed me because these students all have an understanding of what’s important in life. They’re very motivated, and appreciate the opportunity to voice their pro-life views,” she continues.

Courtney Albers, a senior at Marian High School, Bloomfield Hills, won the high school art competition for her poster, with the slogan, “Stay Connected for Life.”

“I wanted to touch everyone with the message that the right to life is a very important right, and that without it there really are no other rights,” she says.

Courtney says she has been involved with the Life Club since her sophomore year, and that it has been one of her major extracurricular activities, second only to her participation in sports.

The club brings in pro-life speakers, organizes an annual trip to the March for Life in Washington, D.C., and also takes part in service projects.

Courtney says she began to understand the importance of the pro-life issue as a student at Our Lady of Sorrows Elementary School in Farmington Hills, and she says she hopes to be able to communicate her pro-life views to those who do not share them.

“I’ve thought about this a lot, and I would tell them that the child did not choose how they’d be coming into the world. But God has a plan for all of us, and it’s not our place to decide who is to live and who is not. You should want to give that baby an equal right to live, because life is for everyone,” Courtney says.

For Nick Mandel, who won the Middle School-level essay contest, the life issue has a very personal aspect.

Born in South Korea and adopted at 5 months old by a Michigan couple, Charles and Sharon Mandel, the seventh-grader at Shrine Academy in Royal Oak, says he hadn’t thought about the abortion issue much before the essay contest came up.

“It got me thinking about how much my birth mother must have loved me to put me up for adoption, and how much my family loves me,” Nick says.

Besides writing his winning essay, he has also joined his parents in praying outside an abortion clinic.

“I just think everybody should get a chance to live,” Nick says.

The Archdiocese of Detroit’s Life is a Gift essay and art contest garnered hundreds of participants – with students writing essays drawing pictures to depict a pro-life message.

The contest winners were given awards by Archbishop Allen Vigneron at last weekend’s Life is a Gift conference, held on Jan. 22 to mark the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that ensured abortion’s legality in all 50 states since 1972.

Many young people who entered the contest were on hand at the event to have the archbishop give a blessing before a trip they would take to Washington D.C. to participate in the March for Life.